Milk Carton Ice Candles - Taskers

Milk Carton Ice Candles - Taskers

This one was probably around since the beginning of the Holiday Workshop. Peter and Toni Tasker ran this one for many years

And a link to making Ice Candles

Origami Boxes out of recycled wrapping paper or Christmas Cards

This one was run by Tom Rich

Materials:
*Recycled wrapping paper or Christmas cards
*Origami directions for making a box and lid

This one is simple. Follow the Origami instructions for making a box and lid. You can encourage kids to use this to wrap one of the gifts they are giving a family member.

Pony Bead Fabric Necklaces – Deb and Ben Soule

Pony Bead Fabric Necklaces – Deb and Ben Soule ran this project multiple times

Materials:
• Strips of seasonal fabric that are a yard long, and cut into 3” vertical strips.
• Clear marbles
• Pony beads
• Needles for hand sewing
• Thread



Instructions:
1. Fold fabric lengthwise with right sides together
2. Stitch lengthwise with a ½ inch seam
3. Turn right side out
4. Pick out a strip of fabric
5. Pick out 12-14 marbles, and 14-16 pony beads. Put all of these in a bowl for your project
6. Start at one end of your fabric and place a pony bead on the outside of the fabric
7. Place a marble inside your fabric
8. Alternate until done ending with a pony bead
9. Tie the two ends of fabric, or could hand sew the ends together

Recycled Christmas cards for Others

From my research this activity was one of the original ones from the early 1980's. Ann Collins was at this activity table for most of the Holiday Workshops, and our Minister Helen Cohen also helped run this one during her 22 years of service as our Minister.

Materials:
Recycled Christmas cards
Glue
Sizzors
Construction paper

This is a simple activity. Encourage participants to make a Christmas or Holiday card for themselves and to also make one for someone else. Cut out images and reapply them to your card. In some years we addressed these to shut-ins and the Minister or Lay Ministers would deliver those ones to them.

It is wonderful to see artists of all ages intensely creating their project and recycling cards from past years

Colored Salt Bottles - Dori Reuss

Colored Salt Bottles - this project was one of the original ones. Dori Reuss ran this one again when she got reinvolved in the Holiday Workshop.

Materials:
• Multiple various shaped small bottles, e.g. baby food, spice, miniature jelly
• Sidewalk chalk, big pieces
• Salt, 12 cylinder containers
• 6 Paper plates
• 6 Plastic spoons
• Short thin dowels or tooth picks
• Aluminum foil
• Curling ribbon

1. Fill 6 plates with a cup of salt
2. Color the salt by rubbing the sidewalk chalk in the salt. You can do this with the rainbow colored chalk
3. Spoon in layers into small bottles with plastic spoon
4. Optional – tip bottle as you work
5. Optional – use dowel several times around the edges to make “icicles” around the outside
6. Make sure to fill to the very top so the sand does not move once finished. You can also tap occasionally to help the sand settle
7. When done, cut a circle of aluminum foil an inch wide than the top. Fold in the edges of the foil into the rim of the lid.
8. Firmly screw on the lid
9. Cut 12 “ curling ribbon and tie this around the neck of the bottle
10. Encourage the children to continue to make the colored salt for the next participants to use

More History on the Holiday Workshop - 2009

Today we ran our annual Holiday Workshop. Here is a picture of many of the originators of the Holiday Workshop which was taken in 2008. I talked with Dori Reuss (the one in front not in the red sweater, but mauve turtleneck) who was one of the originators of the Holiday Workshop. Here are some of her memories of the origins.

"Originally called the "Christmas Workshop", I recall it as an outgrowth of Tracey Robinson-Harris and the Religious Education Committee (of which Connie and I were members). My guess is that it began in the early 1980s. Connie and I organized them for maybe eight or ten years. Many of the traditions begun back then have carried over to this next generation's version: Parker Hall, tables set along the two walls, fire in the fireplace, Christmas music.

Original tables included Allen and his woodworking project, Jim Quick with an evergreen table to make into hanging door decorations, Marty Kvaal in the kitchen creating Stained Glass Cookies (chopped-up lollipops placed into "frames" made of rolled cookie dough), Joyce Fearnside helping kids cut out snowflakes, Helen creating cards for elder members and shut-ins, Meg LeSchack fashioning Scandinavian woven paper baskets as tree decorations, and I making the small colored salt bottles.

My reinvolvement began in a wonderful way! Through my work in the LPS Early Childhood Special Education Department, I encountered Margaret at Hancock Nursery School (whose son was in the same class as the little boy with whom I was working). "Amazing!", I'd thought, "There's Connie Counts!" A bit of a time warp, to be sure, as it was Margaret (somehow I'd thought, perhaps, that I hadn't aged 20+ years!!) She mentioned taking over the Holiday Workshop -- my memories were so positive that I'd offered to help!

Margaret reintroduced two traditions which had been lost in the intervening years. The first was to gather 50 or 60 beer flats from local liquor stores the week before the event, placing them by the door so kids could have something in which to carry their gifts. The second was identifying a collection place for all the participants (children and adults) to leave a gift or two for the women and children at Renewal House. Years ago, when Connie and I first started, we'd had an old wooden house of sorts into which gifts were placed -- a realistic visual cue. Somewhere through the years, it was auctioned off and disappeared. So this year, we left a cardboard box with a simple roof at the exit spot and people filled it with 30 or 40 items. Jane Beswick had connected with the people at Renewal House, and the Monday after the Holiday Workshop she and Brenda Prusak and I delivered them. I was amazed to see the new setting for Renewal House, embedded within a tall business-type building with a double security system. When MaryAnn Armstrong and I had delivered the gifts years ago, usually with our four kids in tow, it had been an old Victorian house whose whereabouts were a closely-guarded secret. My kids (now ages 35 + 32) can still remember sitting on the floor with the kids at Renewal House while they opened their small treasures -- lots of laughter and joy!"

Christmas Bell with flower clay pot

This project started being run by Maureen Bovet in the last 1980's. She got the idea from a friend who gave her one. Maureen loves flowers and landscaping so this project was perfect for her to run. Her quote is: "Pretty simple but with a gardenesque theme which is why I liked it."

Materials:
*Small clay pots, the smallest you can find 1 to 2 inches
*Pipe cleaners, the sparkly the better
*Bells - small with a part on top to put pipe cleaner through

Assembly:
1. Put the pipe cleaner through the top of the bell and put it in the middle of the pipe cleaner
2. Fold the two ends of the pipe cleaner together and twist a few times so the bell will ring easier
3. Then thread those two ends of the pipe cleaners through the bottom hole of the clay pot, from the inside of the pot
4. Twist the pipe cleaners to create a loop for hanging. The pot hangs upside down as a bell
5. The pot can be decorated with stickers

Clothespin Reindeer

Clothespin Reindeer

Contributed and run for many years by the Morse-Fortier family

MATERIALS:
*3 flat sliding kind of clothes pins
*6 inch long piece of thread (red or green)
*One end of a Q-tip
*Tiny Christmas bell
*2 tiny eyes
*1 small red push pin
*Elmer's glue

ASSEMBLY:
1) Cut 4" of thread, make a loop and glue it between two clothes pins
2) Cut 2" of thread, run it through the bell and blue it between the pair of clothespins and the third one, which goes upside down
3) Add the eyes, the red push pin nose, and glue on the Q-tip tail

How to run a Holiday Workshop

The idea behind this blog is to use it as a way to gather details on how to run a Holiday Workshop like the one at First Parish in Lexington, Unitarian Universalist. We have run a Holiday Workshop for decades on a Saturday early in December. Sometimes the sanctuary is decorated and the tree put up on the same day.

The idea is to provide a fun inter-generational event that avoids the crass commercialism of the holiday season while helping to build the true joy of the season.

Typically we gather in our spacious church basement, light some logs in the fireplace, bring low key refreshments and set up various tables for people to make their own small gifts, tree ornaments, or cards. Recently we have stories read to children in front of the fireplace.

We especially want people to add their own memories of what has happened in the past, instructions for the specific craft tables and photos of past events and ornaments.

Look at your tree and decorations for ideas of past projects.

HISTORY: From what I can gather so far, this was started in the range 1975-1980. People involved for sure were Connie Counts and Dori Reuss and Ellen Brandenberg. If anyone knows more history please email Sally or post a comment here.